With the recent debacle that's been the PSN outage, I figured I'd give the topic my two cents (Don't worry, it's free) since I, like 77 million others, have been "punished" for some BS involving a computer nerd, cyber "freedom fighters" (Go figure...), and a greedy/lazy corporation.

That being said, I'm really not affected at all by the outage or the data theft. I hardly do online gaming (Can't stand whiny adolescents in real life, sure as hell won't deal with them over the internet) Sure, my information was stolen along with the others but... it wasn't my actual personal data, and I didn't place my credit card information into the system. Although from what I've read, the credit info was encrypted so... they probably won't be getting through that.

However, I do sympathize with those whose actual personal and credit info was stolen by the hackers if only for the stress it may have caused (Although, it shouldn't be much... Really. We are just talking about video games here.) Sony may not by the greatest company in the world but the guys who actually did this, Anonymous or not, are equally a-holes for playing around with this kind of stuff. If you have a beef with Sony, then attack SONY, not PSN users... Just because we've purchased or use their product does not mean we are employed, or even affiliated with the corporation itself. Now, I do realize that hurting the consumer does hurt Sony from both a PR and economic standpoint but the fact remains that innocent people, most of whom are unfamiliar with this type of crap, are caught in the middle of some pointless cyber war.

If Anonymous was behind this (And I kinda doubt they were, as a collective whole anyway), then you guys need to get off your high horses and stop playing with people's personal data under the pretense that it is your duty to fight "injustices" committed in cyberspace and punish "perpetrators" for their actions. Just stop it. The whole thing comes off as pretentious, and borderline nonsensical, especially considering the circumstances regarding this particular incident... It's really not that serious. If you want to fight actual injustices over the internet, then go after China and their harsh censorship or something... Leave PSN users alone.

One last thing... To those *****ing and moaning over how long PSN has been down, I would hate to see how you'd act during a real crisis... Or at least during the 90's when online gaming was more or less nonexistant. This is a minor inconvenience at worst; pick up a new hobby in the meantime.

lol Haven't made a blog post in over a year actually. But it's a new day.

Anyway, I was thinking about storylines and gaming. Gamespot's feature on narrative and gaming really intrigued me since I write stories of my own from time to time, and it's something I really enjoy doing. But yeah, I've read plenty of books, seen plenty of movies and played plenty of games and I'm of the opinion that gaming is a bit behind the other two mediums that I mentioned when it comes to storytelling. Don't get me wrong, there are quite a few games that do masterful jobs in terms of storytelling, some of the Metal Gear games instantly comes to mind, but... At the same time, I'm not sure gaming will ever quite capture the depth of a great novel or the intangible human element found in the acting performances of a motion picture. I think the underlying problem is in interactivity, games are an interactive medium, otherwise they'd be film. I think that ultimately hinders, at least from an emotional standpoint, how effective games can be at telling a great personal story. For example, let's say that the character you're controlling is supposed to be this tortured, complex individual who abhors violence or something, but he finds himself in a situation where he has to use it to obviously advance through the plot, the problem that I see, is that while the character may show these traits during the cutscenes, during gameplay you can make the guy a violent killing machine who goes after everything and anything with no mercy as opposed to what his character is actually supposed to be. Someone who wants to shed as little blood as necessary, and I think that, in many ways, kills any kind of moral complexity that said character could potentially have, or more accurately, the concrete, realistic element found in the characters in books and movies. I feel that that creates a contridiction in the character's supposedly established personality. The good news is that most video game writers get that, I'm not sure I've ever seen a video game character with such a realistically strict moral code or anything. The bad news, is that it also limits the kinds of characters we see in video games.

We all know the video game archtypes, the badass, the damsel-in-distress, the angsty, spiky-haired teenage hero, etc. And yeah, those can be great, if executed properly. I'd say Auron from FFX and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series are two great examples of a video game "badass" who don't fall entirely into that stale cliche. The problem, is that we see characters who fall into the "stale" category too much, which leads to oversaturation, which then leads to Zzz... Boredom. What happens is that game writers try to feed us a "complex" character by giving them a "deep" backstory, and having that is wonderful, but that's not what a character is... That's not what a human being is. Yes, our backstories mold us into who we are, but they're not what we are. I haven't yet seen a truly dynamic video game character, one that truly changes, aside from crying in a cutscene or something, when something emotional has happened to them. (i.e., the death of someone they loved or at least anything that strikes a personal chord.) What we end up seeing is a nice cutscene or two but that's it. After that, the character's gameplay retains the same, there's no feeling. You lose the sense that the character has been affected. Maybe make the character's movements sluggish, weaken his stats briefly, or something just so I know that said death wasn't just a part of the plot. Films, many times, are guilty of this too, but obviously less often than video games. Highly realistic, detailed graphics have made characters look human-like, but they still haven't quite captured the human element. They've advanced little from the SNES days of storytelling, particularly RPGs whose foundation is mostly based on the story, the only difference is... you guessed it, the graphics.

Dialogue is another thing preventing games from really taking that next level, in my opinion, toward becoming an appreciated form of narrative for the general public. If you're speech sounds awkward and/or robotic, it really lessens that chance that someone will take you seriously. This is really becoming a glaring issue with the growing use of voice actors and actresses, yeah, sometimes they're the ones at fault, but a terrible script will make the best VA sound like a moron. Video game writers, and translators need to take a little more time developing coherent dialogue so we can have less cheesy, and more engaging interactions. A great example of this, for me anyway, is Final Fantasy VII. That game could have really used a tune-up for its horrendous script. It's riddled with typos that, at times, killed the plot's momentum because you have to sit there and figure out what the hell is it that they're saying.

Just like how video game characters are hindered by the fact that we "play" them, video game plots are, as well. Think about the games that you've played that you consider to have deep plots, or great storylines. I bet a lot of them have similiar scenarios, "The End of the World is approaching," "Some random evil dictator," etc, and that's fine. It's wonderful, the problem is that... with gaming, you can't really see much else. It's almost always an "epic," why? Because you have to play the game. We love to shoot, use swords, punch, kick, whatever, and it's great, it's why we play, but that also kinda leads us to more of the same... The same ol' epic with a few twists here and there every so often. Subplots sometimes delve into a character's more personal story, but then again, does it really end up affecting how you save the world, or really the fact that you have to save it at all? Not usually. In the end, most game narratives would fall into the action category of film, the category where we often find lots of action, of course, but little character development... Again, not a terrible thing, but it doesn't foster creativity on a literary level. Now some genres, particularly the point-and-click adventure genre, can be, and usually are, an exception to the rule, but... How many point-and-click games, that aren't gimmicky, do you see nowadays?

I'm not hating on video game narratives, they're wonderful and a few have even inspired me. I love the stories that some video games provide, I just am not yet ready to put them on the level of a novel, or a film. Maybe in the future, it'll change but from what I've seen, we're still some time away from that, if we get there at all.

Well, this is my third blog post and I've just been wondering, "What exactly has happened to video games?"  I was checking out the lineups for the PS3 and 360 and most of the games could be classified into three categories: First person shooter, racing and some generic horror game and I'm just wondering what happened to variety in video games?... Every game is basically the same as the next one before it, it's kind of pathetic when you think about it.  I'm not a gamer or not by the regular definition I suppose since I tend to not keep up with most video games and I don't play too many video games that often or even speak about games on a regular basis but I am on Gamespot so I'm still affiliated with games just not like most people here, I stopped being a 'gamer' in high school but still, back during the 90's you had a variety of different types of games and now you don't really have that variety anymore, it's gone.  Games have gone Hollywood and are basically dictated by trends, a few years ago, the GTA rip-offs were all over the place and now it seems that every game that's coming out is trying to be the next Resident Evil 4 or Gears of War and it'll stay that way until the next 'big' thing happens and that's pretty sad, I think.  Maybe Nintendo can bring it back with the Wii and the motion sensing controls but even that seems grim as the Wii like the Gamecube before it is already being dubbed, 'A disappointment' or the 'kiddie' system so it seems that the sad trend of video games of today will continue as Microsoft and Sony kill each other trying to make their games look better and more powerful.  You can have the video games of today as far as I'm concerned, the price tag is gonna keep on rising and it seems that gaming will become a rich man's hobby so you can have it, the best days of games has passed everyone by.  I hope the Wii succeeds the way I think it should but I am doubtful about that not because of the Wii as a system but because the generic shooters with pretty graphics and same old 'scary' horror games are the same games that become blockbusters every time so as long as the customer settles for the same old same old, they'll get the same old same old but not me, it's a joke the way I see it.

I like all three of the systems, I think they're all great but games need to get more variety because these trends that seem to dominate are getting old, really old.

Well, after making the decision to leave a site that I helped build, I've decided to move on to GameSpot and become a regular user for a bit.  This is my first blog entry on this site or in my life period and prior to that I didn't even know what a damn blog was!  But still, it's something to do... Heh.  While I've been here on GS, I've done 8 reviews for a variety of games and have posted quite a few of the games in my personal collection and man do I have a lot... I never realized just how many games that I have, probably because I rarely play most of them but since I don't trade my stuff in, my collection will continue to grow.  Oh well, it's kinda cool in a way and according to GS, I could buy a decent used car with the estimated value of all of them. 

Well, this was my first blog entry and it felt kinda odd since I've never really been a 'journal' kind of guy but like the title says, it's a 'new beginning' for me. 

Bx Out.